Yield Guild Games Raises $1.325mil Seed Led by Delphi Digital
In March 2021, Yield Guild Games (YGG) announced it raised a seed round of $1.325 million from some of crypto’s most influential early-stage investors.
The funds will be used to develop the YGG protocol and invest in yield-generating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) found in blockchain games and virtual worlds. Recently, YGG invested $100,000 into virtual land in Axie Infinity and The Sandbox.
The blockchain startup is led by co-founders Gabby Dizon, Beryl Li and Owl of Moistness. Dizon co-founded Altitude Games in 2014 and brings over two decades experience in mobile gaming. Li co-founded an asset token platform in 2016 which was acquired in 2019 by SMKG: OTC US, and was also on the founding team at Philippine crypto exchange Coins.ph, which was acquired by GoJek in 2018. Owl of Moistness is a technology co-founder and smart contract developer.
As reported by world-leading crypto news publication, Coindesk, YGG’s mission is to bring players into the metaverse. Part of that mission involves investing in the economic potential of virtual worlds while empowering guild members to earn a living.
“It would be great if we could monetize the time and attention that we invest in games. The problem so far is that only exceptional esports athletes and celebrities are living this dream. But Dizon sees potential for everyday people to make a living this way,” wrote Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer for VentureBeat.
Dean has been a tech journalist for nearly 30 years, and has covered the games industry for over 20 years. Read his feature article announcing the YGG seed raise here.
Expanding YGG’s Reach Through The Raised Funds
The funds were raised from Delphi Digital, BlockTower, Scalar Capital, Youbi Capital, Ascensive Assets, gumi Cryptos, Animoca Brands, Dialectic, SevenX Ventures, Sparq Ventures, Matic (Polygon), Sfermion, Bitscale Capital, Flamingo DAO and Free Company, as well as angel investors including Marc Weinstein, Sébastien Borget, Jeffrey ‘Jiho’ Zirlin, Aleksander Larsen, David Cunio, Alex Amsel, Julien Bouteloup, Joe Mahon, and others.
YGG will use the funds to continue investing in the burgeoning NFT scene. As a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), YGG pools investor assets and purchases yield-generating NFTs to be optimized for maximum utility and returns, sharing its profits with YGG token holders. Its focus is on NFTs that intersect with the crypto gaming sector.
The Decision To Invest in YGG
The following are comments and insights from some of YGG’s investors on why they chose to invest.
“Play-to-earn gaming is getting people to learn about crypto that never would have thought about it otherwise. We really believe this will play a massive role in unlocking crypto adoption at scale and we invested in YGG because their team has deep community roots and strong influence throughout the ecosystem,” said Anil Lulla, co-founder and COO of Delphi Digital.
Read more about Delphi Digital’s investment in YGG here.
“Gabby has a lot of experience and an amazing reputation in NFT,” said Steve Lee, investor at BlockTower, who first met Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG, in South Korea, 2018. In the years since, Steve says he’s met up with Dizon at NFT-related events all over the world. “Over that time, we’ve become quite close and developed a strong relationship,” said Lee. He added:
“Whenever I communicated with Gabby, I learned such valuable insight that helps me navigate and research the NFT space, which led me to make many great investment decisions. While there is tons of cheap information that blocks you from reading what is really going on in the space, Gabby is one of few people that I anchor too.
“Now, I’m very excited about his project that is well tailored and customized with his expertise and knowledge he has accumulated over years. YGG has already been building a super strong community and knows how to make this community sticky. Rather than focusing on creating one killer game, they will create a “guild” that can deliver organic growth across many different initiatives by collaborating with many amazing partners in the ecosystem,” said Lee.
“Scalar invested in YGG because we believe they will bring in a wave of new people from all over the world to crypto through play-to-earn gaming. YGG will enable gamers to become investors with the guild purchasing land and tokens in games that they actively participate in,” said Linda Xie, co-founder and Managing Director of Scalar Capital.
“One of the majorly attractive elements of the YGG business model is how YGG has formed a repeatable and scalable onramp to blockchain and cryptographic assets for gamers,” said Miko Matsumura, General Partner at gumi Cryptos Capital. “As we know, gamers often represent the earliest adopters of any new technology, and YGG has a tremendous ability to recruit and convert non-crypto gamers into becoming crypto gamers,” said Miko Matsumura, General Partner at gumi Cryptos.
Read more about gumi Cryptos’ investment in YGG here.
“YGG fills an obvious gap. They are helping to build the NFT gaming ecosystem. The thesis around it is very simple. I see YGG as a recruitment agency for the metaverse,” said Yat Siu, Chairman of Animoca Brands.
Read more about Animoca Brand’s investment in YGG here.
“I believe YGG is probably the most exciting project that we’ve got involved with so far. Although all of them are exciting, YGG is revolutionary. YGG is a multifaceted entity. It is part-NFT fund, part-NFT farming,” said Andrew Steinwold of Sfermion.
Read more about Sfermion’s investment in YGG here.
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